If there is one term used the most often in bodywork and somatic clinical psychology, it has to be body awareness. “I work with the client’s body awareness;” “I enhance the client’s body awareness;” “I explore the client’s body awareness;” and so on and so forth are common expressions practitioner’s use to describe their work in exploring, expanding, and changing a person’s consciousness of embodiment.
But, what does the term really mean? It most likely means different things to different professionals. A dance therapist might look for increased grace when moving. A Rolfer might want a client to feel more grounded in their feet (“grounded;” now there’s another universal ambiguity). A clinical somatic psychotherapist might look for a client being more sensitive to their emotional body states and more ready to express them. A Tai Chi Ch’uan teacher looks for how closely the student’s movements conform to the ideal postures.
It all depends on the therapeutic philosophy and goals and so not all meanings are the same across all disciplines.
This issue was investigated using focus groups composed of fourteen practitioners of various mind-body therapies and a group of their clients (Mehling et al., 2011). The researchers themselves define body awareness as “Body awareness involves an attentional focus on and awareness of internal body sensations. Body awareness, as we define it here, is the subjective, phenomenological aspect of proprioception and interoception that enters conscious awareness, and is modifiable by mental processes including attention, interpretation, appraisal, beliefs, memories, conditioning, attitudes and affect” (p. 2). The focus group of professionals was composed of eight senior practitioners in Yoga (Iyengar), Yoga Therapy (Desikachar), Tai Chi (Yang style), meditation (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, Breath Therapy (Middendorf), Somatic Experiencing, Somatic Therapy, Hakomi therapy, and massage. They were asked: “In a nutshell…
(1) “Can you tell us about your work and describe a typical client for your method, the reason he/she came to see you, what he/she hopes to get from your method, and what you hope the client gets from it?”
(2) “Understanding that different practices use different types of language to describe what they do, what does body awareness mean to you and how is it a part of your work?”
(3) “If you consider your specific approach, how, or in which way, do you think it improves a client’s body awareness?”
(4) “If you talk about body awareness with your clients, how do you talk about it? What words or terms do you use? If you don’t verbalize about body awareness, how do you address it in your practice?”
(5) “Do you think a client’s body awareness has an impact on her/his health condition? Can you please illustrate this for us with an example from your practice?”
And their clients were asked: “Please, tell us in a nutshell…
(1) About the therapy you received and why you went to this practitioner? What was your goal in seeing this practitioner?”
(2) “Please, tell us about your experience and what you learned. Did this approach help you pay attention to your body sensations?” Probing questions: “Do you feel that paying attention to body sensations was helpful, unhelpful, or not relevant to your particular therapy? Did your way of relating to your physical body change as a result of this therapy? How did it change? Did you feel different within your body after this therapy? In which way did you feel different?”
(3) “If you saw your practitioner for a specific health condition, do you think this therapy had an impact on your health condition? Can you please illustrate this for us with an example from your experience? Do you think the changes in your body awareness had anything to do with the changes in your health condition?”
Differing Understandings
Practitioner Understanding of Body Awareness
- They think more in terms of self-awareness rather than body awareness.
- Have a broad understanding of awareness as a holistic experience encompassing the self, body, emotions, thoughts, feelings, etc.
- Interested in increasing the client’s “capacity for embodiment” by evoking “innate intelligence” and purpose-driven intentionality.
- Believe that the experience of incomplete embodiment is what motivates clients to seek therapy.
- Despite differences in therapeutic modalities and expertise, the practitioners represented emphasized (1) the use of breath, (2) training the client via repetitive actions, (3) exploring body sensations, thoughts, and emotions to (4) achieve a deeper integration of body and mind as the ultimate therapeutic goal
Client Understanding of Body Awareness
Clients necessarily hold a different perspective, but ones which have some similarities to the views of practitioners
- Patients seek therapy because they are driven by a personal need and not out of an intellectual understanding of a particular therapeutic model.
- They see treatment as a process or journey.
- Breath awareness is a key aspect for them.
- They described two shifts in awareness: toward their negative emotions and toward their body sensations.
- As clients learned to discern their emotions and sensations better, they were able to take more control of their own self-regulation.
- Their experience of mind-body integration resulted in changes in their identities and their relationships with other.
Closing Thoughts
Mehling et al., (2011) is a very interesting study for several reasons and it offers several important pieces of learning. First, body awareness is inseparable from embodied consciousness and is one distinct aspect of consciousness in general. The study also reaffirms the importance of breathing awareness in exploring body experience and emotional states. Secondly, the paths of therapeutic process as revealed here include entering therapy because of a pressing need; the body is experienced as being foreign in some way to the self; this issue is explored in the here-and-now; and, finally, there is integration of the foreign with the known and a resolution or transcendence is realized.
These findings were revealed in the qualitative analysis of focus-group responses and represent the subjective approach to understanding body experience. Part II of this blog-lecture focuses on the scientific, objective discernment of differing aspects of body awareness. I recommend you complete this lecture by going there to see the other side of the story as it were.
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
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References
Mehling, W., Wrubel, J., Daubenmier, J., Price, C., Kerr, C., Silow, T., Gopisetty, V., & Stewart, A. (2011). Body awareness: A phenomenological inquiry into the common ground of mind-body therapies. Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 6(6), http://www.peh-med.com/content/6/1/6.